Huffer

Huffer is the Ark's construction engineer and its most sincere pessimist. Where Gears grumbles for effect, Huffer means it. He complained through the war on Cybertron, and being marooned on Earth in 1984 as a stubby orange semi truck cab only gave him more material. His first line in the Marvel comic sets the tone for everything that follows: "Oh, I say we leave right now and forget about traipsing after the stupid Decepticons." He wants to go home, he does not think they will make it home, and he will tell anyone within earshot.

He is also very good at his job. As an engineer he can design and build almost anything, and he was one of the hands on both the original Dinobot project and the later construction of Snarl and Swoop, having loudly declared the whole idea a waste of time first. His verdict on the Ark's condition after the crash was so bleak it demoralised the crew.

The cartoon repeatedly undercuts the whining with courage. In "Divide and Conquer" his gloom about a dying Optimus Prime gets him physically silenced by Ironhide, and yet when Spike Witwicky's determination shames him into action it is Huffer who leads the defence of the base and drops Thundercracker with one punch. In "Heavy Metal War" he tows Prime's trailer home after the rigged duel and Prime calls him a true friend. In "The Autobot Run" he refuses to join the charity race on a bad feeling, is proved entirely right when Megatron's Transfixatron locks the others in vehicle mode, and joins the rescue anyway. Brawn nearly hugs him to death for the attitude first.

A construction engineer capable of designing and building structures and machinery of great complexity, and strong enough to tow Optimus Prime's trailer unaided. Physically he is a Mini Vehicle, small and unsuited to sustained front-line combat, and his real limitation is temperamental rather than mechanical: his defeatism spreads to the ranks and he has to be argued or shamed into action. When he does commit he hits hard, decking Thundercracker with a single punch.

• Gears: his opposite number in the complaining stakes, though Huffer's gloom is real and Gears's is largely theatre.
• Brawn: cuts him out of the burning oil rig in the pilot and later nearly bear-hugs him to death for his defeatism, which sums up the relationship.
• Ironhide: has no patience for the pessimism and physically shuts him up in "Divide and Conquer".
• Optimus Prime: repeatedly has to motivate him personally, and thanks him sincerely after the Heavy Metal War defeat.

Marvel's Huffer is meaner as well as gloomier: he publicly demands that Sparkplug Witwicky be punished as a traitor, and the resulting argument contributes to the old man's heart attack. The cartoon keeps the whining but consistently redeems him with acts of courage the comic never gives him.

Killed at the Battle of Autobot City in 2005 in The Transformers: The Movie, shortly after helping Bluestreak and Kup build the roadblock Hot Rod ploughs through. His remains were placed aboard the interstellar Autobot Mausoleum, which Daniel Witwicky later found, and a Quintesson plot plunged the mausoleum and what was left of Huffer into a red sun in "Dark Awakening".

• The mould first appeared in 1983 in Takara's Micro Change line as an unnamed "American truck", with evidence suggesting Knickerbocker originally designed it for the cancelled Mysterians line. Hasbro heavily retooled it into Pipes; the Mexican IGA release of Pipes was a straight redeco of Huffer.
• His Japanese name is Drag, and he was sold there in 1985 in a small box rather than on a card, with only a rubsign and no foil faction symbol.
• The 1985 re-releases packed first-year Mini Vehicles with Mini-spies; Huffer and Windcharger only ever came with blue ones.
• A variant animation model gives him a semi-circular hood behind his head instead of the usual rectangular one, seen in his Marvel Transformers Universe profile and the story "Totaled!"; his character model also inherits the toy's oddly low mid-torso shoulders.
• The animation model gave him a mouthplate the original toy does not have.

Where the cartoon, the Marvel comics and the toy bios disagree, or where a popular claim does not hold up. We record these rather than smoothing them over.

• His death at Autobot City is not clearly staged on screen; it is established retroactively by his remains appearing in the Autobot Mausoleum in "Dark Awakening".
• The Marvel and cartoon characterisations diverge sharply on whether his pessimism ever tips into genuine malice toward humans.